I use collaged magazine arrangements as a compositional starting point forlarge scale theatrical paintings. The idealized surface quality and smoothintent of the source material itself becomes physically flawed andconceptually corrupted by the humanising process of painting and narrativereassembly. It is within this process of corruption that the possibility ofambiguity opens up. In addition to the readymade ‘expressive’ poses of the magazine models who Ireimagine as vampiric sirens calling the viewer into the paintings’non-space, found objects are introduced as clues or props and occasionalbands of borrowed text (from such sources as pop lyrics, make-up ads orother peoples’ love letters) combine to form a dislocated narrative where,free from a central plot, I’m left with a structure for interpretative play.While the aggressively vacuous nature of this game insists on an elaborateframing of meaningless symbolism, it seems to simultaneously obscure and act out my personal stories, perhaps using the death mask of media appropriation as an alibi for the fragile possibility of expressiveness. Or do these pop-gothic webs expose the paintings’ and perhaps even the Imaginations’ status as nothing but a personal arrangement of commerciallyproduced fantasy?

The title slogan ‘WAS IT DESTINY? I DON’T KNOW YET’ (lyrics from Blondie’s ‘I’m Always Touched by Your Presence Dear’) is crudely painted on the left hand panel of a diptych which has been reworked and remixed from an earlier painting entitled ‘You’re My Beachy Head’. This cut and paste process runs right through Glass’s practice from the initial magazine collage ‘maquettes’ from which the paintings are structured to the rearrangement of elements such as found objects,text, smaller paintings and framed pictures hung on the main panels. Through this process a fractured narrative is produced which deliberately fails in its attempt at grandiose personal ‘expressiveness’ and is clearly only able to speak through received images in a compositional game of endless displacement. Amplifying the characteristics of the magazine mentality, the posturing, vacuous sentimentality, glamour and overall aimless seduction become, in Glass’s work, cheapened and garish to the point of aggression.